Excerpt from Fatal TraumaDr. Mark Baker swept his
straw-colored hair away from his eyes, then wiped his forearm across his brow. He
wished the air-conditioning in the emergency room were better. Patients might
complain that it was cool, but if you were hurrying from case to case for eight
hours or more, it was easy to work up a sweat. “Nobody move!”Mark spun toward the
doors leading to the ER, where a wild-eyed man pressed a pistol against a
nurse’s head. She pushed a wheelchair in which another man sat slumped forward,
his eyes closed, his arms crossed against his bloody chest. Dark blood oozed
from beneath his splayed fingers and dropped in a slow stream, leaving a trail
of red droplets on the cream-colored tile. Behind them, Mark could
see a hospital security guard sprawled facedown and motionless on the floor,
his gun still in its holster, a crimson worm of blood oozing from his head.
Mark’s doctor’s mind automatically catalogued the injury as a basilar skull fracture.
Probably hit him behind the ear with the gun barrel. The gunman was in his
late twenties. His caramel-colored skin was dotted with sweat. A scraggly
moustache and beard framed lips compressed almost to invisibility. Straight, black
hair, parted in the middle, topped a face that displayed both fear and
distrust. Every few seconds he moved the barrel of the gun away from his
hostage’s temple long enough to wave it around, almost daring anyone to come
near him. The wounded man was a few
years older than the gunman—maybe in his thirties. His swarthy complexion was
shading into pallor. Greasy black hair fell helter-skelter over his forehead.
His face bore the stubble of several days’ worth of beard. “I mean it,” the gunman
said. “Nobody move a muscle. My brother needs help, and I’ll kill anyone who
gets in the way.”Mark’s immediate reaction
was to look around for the nearest exit, but the gunman’s next words made him
freeze before he could act. “You the doc?” Now the gun was pointed
at him. Mark thought furiously of ways to escape without being shot, but he
discarded each plan as fast as it crossed his mind. “Yeah, I’m the doc.”The gunman inclined his
head toward the man in the wheelchair. “He’s . . . he’s been shot.” He snatched
two ragged breaths. “I want you to fix him, pull him through.” He punctuated
his words with rapid gestures from the pistol. “If he dies . . . if he dies,
I’m going to kill everyone in here.” The gunman turned back toward his hostage.
“Starting with her.” Mark’s eyes followed the
gun as it traversed once more from him to the nurse pushing the wheelchair. To
this point his attention had been focused on the gunman, but now that he
recognized the hostage, he knew the stakes were even higher. Although her red
hair was disheveled, her normally fair skin flushed, there was no mistaking the
identity of the woman against whose head the gunman’s pistol lay. The nurse was
Kelly Atkinson—the woman Mark was dating. ***Kelly gritted her teeth
against the pain of the gun barrel boring into her temple. Her stomach clenched
and churned with the realization that her life was in the hands of this crazed
gunman. Her lips barely moved in silent prayer.Mark’s voice seemed
remarkably steady to her, considering the circumstances. “I can see that he
needs help, and I’ll give it, but stop waving that gun around.” He nodded
toward Kelly. “First of all, I’m going to need some assistance, and the nurse
certainly can’t help me with you holding that pistol against her head. Why
don’t you put it down and step away? You can wait over there, and I’ll let you
know—”“Shut up!” Suddenly the pressure on
Kelly’s temple was gone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the gunman turn
his weapon and his attention once more to Mark. If she was going to act, now
was the time. She looked down at the man in the wheelchair and put all the
urgency she could muster into her words, “Doctor, I’m not sure he’s breathing!
He may be in arrest.”Ignoring the gunman, Mark
took several steps forward and squatted in front of the wheelchair. He touched
the wounded man’s neck with two fingers, then placed his stethoscope on the
man’s chest. In a few seconds, Mark pulled back his bloody hand, straightened
and said, “We need to get him into one of the trauma rooms. Right now!”Ignoring the gunman,
Kelly started pushing the wheelchair toward trauma room two. “What will you
need?” she asked over her shoulder.She hoped Mark’s reply
would communicate the urgency of the situation and further distract the
gunman’s attention. He didn’t disappoint her. “I need to intubate him and start
CPR. Start a couple of IV’s with large bore needles so we can push some Lactated
Ringer’s into him until the blood bank can cross-match him for half a dozen
units.”After an emphatic gesture
from her, Bob, one of the ER aides reluctantly fell in behind Kelly. Bob’s
ebony skin couldn’t show pallor, but he was sweating profusely. As he followed
Kelly, he murmured under his breath, “What does the doctor think he’s doing?”Kelly’s answer was a
hoarse whisper. “I think he’s trying to save everyone’s life.”